1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to disk controllers, disk drives and related methods.
2. Description of Related Art
As is known, many varieties of disk drives, such as magnetic disk drives are used to provide data storage for a host device, either directly, or through a network such as a storage area network (SAN) or network attached storage (NAS). Typical host devices include stand alone computer systems such as a desktop or laptop computer, enterprise storage devices such as servers, storage arrays such as a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) arrays, storage routers, storage switches and storage directors, and other consumer devices such as video game systems and digital video recorders. These devices provide high storage capacity in a cost effective manner.
The disk drive includes a controller circuit that interfaces with the host device to execute read and write commands of the host. This disk controller generally includes one or more integrated circuits that control the operation of the drive devices, such as servo motors and voice coil motors used to spin the disk and to control the position of one or more read/write heads, that generate timing signals and the produce and decode the signals required to write data to and read data from the disk. When two or more integrated circuits are employed, an interface is required between these devices to facilitate the cooperation of these devices in the control of the disk drive.
Various limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art through comparison of such systems with the present invention.